OpenBSD 4.9 was released today. Coincident with the release, I have made available Live Media .iso files based on OpenBSD 4.9, suitable for burning on DVD or CD media. Six different desktop configurations are available in both i386 and amd64 architectures.

A link with more information may be found in my signature, below.

Congratulations to the OpenBSD Project developers for another excellent release!

These things weren't designed for "rescue" but they can certainly be used for such administrative tasks.

An OpenBSD admin I know wanted me to put "everything" on a live DVD, for those just-in-case-I-need-it moments. I think it would have to be on blue-ray, there are 6620 i386 ports, and 6570 amd64 ports. Too big for DVD. But really, that kind of thing is easiest to do on a USB drive, assuming the platforms in question can boot from USB storage. Not all can.

It also doesn't do a lot of other customization. It has a friendly non-obtrusive startup script, but that's it. No custom 1337 shell configuration, or weird aliases, or a strange fluxbox setup, or ....

In short: It's sane LiveCD with no surprises. Not something that can be said of many of the FreeBSD/Linux LiveCD's I've used in the past ...

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

Any chance of putting maybe a LiveCD of current snapshots in particular amd64. There are so many things that are happening right now and I do not have time to test them but I would gladly give a spin to your LiveCD.

Any chance of putting maybe a LiveCD of current snapshots in particular amd64. There are so many things that are happening right now and I do not have time to test them but I would gladly give a spin to your LiveCD.

First, the workload would be significant. A release(8), a build of nearly 1500 ports, and then individually provisioning each of the images, testing them, and finally packaging them, takes a great deal of time, as well as effort. To quote myself, straight from my little FAQ:

Quote:

This is -release. Why not -stable or -current?

3. There are 12 different ISOs. I do not intend to spend the time to build these more than twice per year, with each new -release....

Secondly, it was never my intent to use this for -current feature testing. That I do, but I usually just use a virtual machine, or a suite of virtual machines if it is a networking feature. To be clear, my offering permits some OS familiarity for new users, and hardware testing for existing OpenBSD users, such as testing a computer for compatibility before buying it. That it can also be used for "rescue" administration is a nice-to-have, but not my intent.

Thirdly, it's easy enough to install any release(8) onto a USB stick, assuming your destination platform can boot USB mass storage. The entire effort it takes, if you have a running OpenBSD system: download the appropriate bsd.rd kernel, boot it, insert a stick, and run the install script. The time it takes depends upon your bandwidth to the nearest mirror. The process is described in OpenBSD FAQ 14.17.3. It is a simple portable disk drive installation, and not a read-only "live media" environment, such as I create.

Lastly, I'd be happy to share my build scripts that I use to create my live media. However, the process of creating CD9660 read only live media is far more involved, and complicated, and time consuming than installing a snapshot on a stick. To get a glimpse of the underlying process of setting up a read-only version of the OS with MFS partitions for writing, there are links to two "howto" documents for creating your own live media at the bottom of my FAQ.